I spoke too soon

The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported.

Where once Turkey had the pride of being one of the most secular Islamic nations, they’ve now fallen far.

Only tangentially related, but….allow me to completely dampen spirits, and pull all those overconfident– even arrogant– in our ranks who think we are slowly but steadily ‘winning’ to be ratcheted down a notch or two. Observe….

This is a beautiful display of ignorance. I met medical doctors in Turkey who cure people’s problems with antibiotics every day, but they do not think that Darwin was right.

I have some of those doctors as collegues. Cognitive dissonance on full power. Spoke to some about Hox genes once, 500 million years and all, didn’t go down well. Then it sank in that they are actually all creationists.

I’m afraid that I fail to see a significant change in Turkey. That country has long
opposed evolution, to the point that it has been illegal to publicly state that people
are related to animals (actually being animals no less). See the Nat Geo website
showing that evolution has been even less accepted in Turkey than within the US.NatGeo

Recent educational policy changes in Turkey will force rational, intelligent Turk parents to send their children out-of-country for a real education.
Expect to see more Turks applying to your universities.
…
Expect to sell more medium to higher end technologies, and the support staff to operate it, to Turkey as they lose the ability to produce or operate any themselves.
…
Expect, in the long term, to sell to Turkey the most basic technology, such as pencils and crayons for the same reason as above.
…
Alas, I do not know where Turkey will get the resources to pay for any of it. There is a limit to their natural resources.

Sparks
I think we are in the process of an extinction event whether we are at the beginning , middle or toward end only time will tell.
When I look at other events in the past it is my impression that many took many years not the Hollywood death blow. the only “wild” species that I know of outside of our vermin and transplants that has not been diminished world wide is us.

On Turkey and theocracy of all majority Islamic countries it has suffered the least in this latest round of upheaval, I do not think it will continue like that.

I have some of those doctors as collegues. Cognitive dissonance on full power. Spoke to some about Hox genes once, 500 million years and all, didn’t go down well. Then it sank in that they are actually all creationists.

What – in New Fucking Zealand!?!?!

Not that the EU has been exactly chomping at the bits to get Turkey in, but Erdogan has been working on it for years.

Erdoğan wants to be caliph. Disappointed with the EU, he’s looking in the other direction now, towards Iraq and Syria. As soon as China lets him, he’ll have Assad strangled with a silken cord… ;-)

Recent educational policy changes in Turkey will force rational, intelligent Turk parents to send their children out-of-country for a real education.
Expect to see more Turks applying to your universities.

Already lots of them in Germany (I believe they are our single largest minority, by a large amount), I guess we’ll get more … apart from the time when the PKK and the Turkish secret services held part of their war over here (which was the main reason the PKK was declared a terrorist organization in Germany, long before the US “war on terror”), I’d say overall, they have also been the least problematic group apart from our direct neighbors.

Of course, Turkey and Germany have a long history with each other, going back at least to Ataturk (who called in a few German linguists to create the modern Turkish writing system – there’s a reason they use a Latin script with lots of German-style ü and ß and so on).

Remember also that Turkey is not only the only Islamic NATO member, but was until recently the only Islamabad state with military cooperation with Israel. (And I remember back in my BITNET times … um, wasn’t LISTSERV a Turkish development?)

But modern Turkey has always struggled between the secularists (especially the military) and the Islamists.